"Sobbing and not caring, wishing the tears hadn't blurred her vision because she was sure the slow-fading beam kept slashing over something out there, just out of reach.

Large or small, she couldn't tell.

A glimpse, nothing more.

And when the flashlight finally died and left her in the dark, the sound of soft wings settled over her.
Without even time for a single frightened scream."

Charles L. Grant wrote what he called "quiet horror". Think a cross between the old Universal Horror Films (Wolf Man, Dracula, etc) and 1970s monster flicks. Toss in some old Hammer Horror. He would have been right at home, doing an episode of the original Night Stalker TV series.

The "Black Oak" series is pretty much what you'd get if "The X-Files" had been about a guy with a private security firm, who dabbles in weird and "unusual" cases, on the side. Proctor isn't a Mulder clone, in fact he's nothing like Mulder. And he doesn't have a specific sidekick, though in this volume (and it future ones, it is suggested) he does have a female partner who is more bodyguard than investigator.

A mysterious plea for help, an unnamed threat, and an extremely unusual small town that doesn't show up on all maps... just right for horrors and danger and life threatening action!

I'm never disappointed by Grant. But if you want more gore and splatter... well... it's here, but only subtly so... but this ain't your modern horror show.

I quite enjoyed it. ( )

This is the second installment in the Black Oak Security series featuring Ethan Proctor, the owner & lead investigator of the firm. A fun, scary, X-files like story, you'll like it if you are ready to settle down with a supernatural mystery that is just for fun. While it could be in the horror genre, it is also science fiction & a mystery. It's not horror that sells in the supermarket,either.

In the first installment Ethan Proctor decided that he would take on the case of multi-millionaire Taylor Blaine's missing daughter. The missing daughter seems to be an ongoing story from what I can tell. In this book, while the Black Oak Team is working on the Blaine case, Ethan decides to take on the case of an old woman who sent him a letter for help from a town out in the Kansas boonies. Blaine (as Proctor notes), sends Ethan his own employee, Vivian, to "protect his investment". So though Proctor doesn't want her there, that's too bad, so she goes along with him to Kansas. When they get there, they feel like they've stumbled onto Dodge City, complete with saloon, stables and hitching posts for the horses. No one pays them any attention, which is weird enough, but as night begins to fall, people begin to go home, not wanting to be out on the streets at night. But it turns out that there is some strange religious cult/order which takes up residence in the town, and since they've been there, people have been disappearing. However, to hear the townspeople talk, the religious group is actually helpful to the town, so what's going on?

Actually, this book went very fast. I think the missing Blaine girl story is a sort of background thing that will be a part of the other books and then eventually in some subtle way, make its way to the forefront of one of the stories. While this book was sufficiently mysterious & spooky, if not altogether ooky, there were a few unanswered questions left hanging. If my hunch is right, though, these stories are all going to connect up at some point. So don't be frustrated by the ending, although it was difficult not to be.

Read book #1 first!!! I think it's important so that you get a handle on Ethan's character & with the missing Blaine daughter story. Read book 1, sit back, relax, pour yourself a nice cup of coffee & read. Have fun. I have just ordered book #3; I really want this series to move along! ( )